MMOs and game design

Menu

The Fluff post

It’s a given that World of Warcraft is great for fluff content; pop culture references, silly holiday costumes and devices to throw at other players, things to do in down-time, etc.

I can dress my new dwarf shaman up as a pilgrim and turn other players into turkeys – now that’s what I call fluff!

But, if they’re so great with fluff, where’s the housing, the cosmetic clothing, the trophies? Why is it so easy to give us vanity pets (which are great and strangely addictive) and not the rest. Every time I get some new cool bit of clothing or mask at a holiday, I crave cosmetic armour. I want trophies like in Warhammer Online, medals I can pin to my armour. I want a better selection of titles and for achievement points to mean something. And I’d like housing so I could have housing items. I love all these things about the MMOs I’ve played in the past and that I currently play.

And WoW is so great at so much fun content, that I feel the lack there all the more. If I couldn’t see the full pilgrim armour, or the Day of the Dead gear.. I wouldn’t care about the cosmetics. Also, the moment you see it done well in one game, you kind of realise all games could probably do it.

If there was one fluff content area you could add to WoW from another game, what would it be? I think for me it’d be housing, and all that entails.

13 thoughts on “The Fluff post”

The other fluff thing I always wanted in WoW was a surname, and maybe support for a RP character description the way they do in CoH. I’m still not really sure about housing – I like my house in LOTRO but I never go there.

Also I prefer if achievement points are meaningless. Just because I don’t much like achievements and don’t want to feel pushed to do them. Although I guess some cosmetic rewards would be OK.

I think the lack of RP support in WoW was definitely one of the reasons I stopped doing it. I used to have one of those addons that allowed you to add a surname, description etc. for yourself, but it kept getting outdated and every time I updated I lost all the information… I just got tired of having to rewrite it all, over and over again. I wish something like that was actually part of the base game; it would be the simplest thing ever.

I think the ability to use a cosmetic armor set for looks while using another one for stats would be great. When I work really hard to get a set of armor I want to be able to show it off. It sucks when the next patch comes along, I upgrade my gear, and I look hodge-podge again.

I also love titles and wish there were more in the game with interesting ways to earn them.

I’d love to have more titles like they do in lotro, where you can get a title for doing just about anything. Somehow, being Nathyrra, who has been really helpful to the men of Bree, is better than being Lyllea, Kingslayer.
I guess I feel like titles should tell you what the character considers important, instead of mostly being a way to show off.

And I want a way to turn off my shoulders. Those things are huge and why exactly is a priest wearing massive bits on their shoulders?

I don’t even know where to start. Blizzard hasn’t put any cosmetic or “fluff” items anywhere on design rotation for a long while. Even the titles are, as Melfina points out, mostly another level of tiered progression.

There are things that WoW does wonderfully, but the development team does not seem to care about allowing people to actually become engaged in the world. Judging by the subscriber numbers, they have very little incentive to start caring, either.

Sure, I’d love housing and surnames and more RP support, but if I could just have an appearance tab (a la LotRO) I’d be happy.

Unfortunately, recent comments by Ghostcrawler on Blizzcast #15 lead me to believe that at this point, an appearance tab won’t be happening… but a girl can dream, right? And Blizz has changed their minds in the past.

Cosmetics, making my gear look like something else would be awesome. Especially if you could take gear you can’t normally wear but drop it in a cosmetic slot so you use the stats for your class appropriate gear but can technically look like you are wearing anything in the game.